not sure if margin is still a thing? in any case: http://pando.com/2014/08/31/its-motown-all-over-again-smashing-pumpkins-drummer-now-a-ceo-wants-to-save-the-music-industry-through-tech/

Pizza Club

09-01-2014, 06:36 PM

I'm glad to see Jimmy using his experiences to do cool stuff like this. Instead of whining about the record industry/Internet, he's putting his money where his mouth is. I hope they can do well. My interest in concert going has not declined with my decreased time and energy for doing so.

toase

09-01-2014, 07:26 PM

Yeah nice marketing move you did there,
Now stream some new JCC

Crying Mercury

09-01-2014, 09:28 PM

I love this interview, it certainly elaborates slightly on some comments he made in Rolling Stone where he talked about music being a small part of peoples's lives.

Elphenor

09-01-2014, 09:30 PM

This bored me.

Who cares, make music

fuzzyroes

09-01-2014, 09:50 PM

This bored me.

Who cares, make music

Nice contribution to the discussion, "bro".

Ram27

09-01-2014, 10:04 PM

The writing style is pretty unreadable.

And/or the music industry bores me.

The idea at the core is pretty cool, though. If it were actually available, I'd watch a band play every night of their tour. Part of the fun of a concert is the nice speakers and stuff though.

Elphenor

09-01-2014, 10:09 PM

When musicians talk about industry it's pretty lame.

You're an artist. Make Art.

myosis

09-02-2014, 09:12 AM

When musicians talk about industry it's pretty lame.

You're an artist. Make Art.
you're a bitch. shut up and make me a sandwich.

amoergosum

09-08-2014, 06:08 PM

>>>

“It’s Motown all over again.” Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer, now a CEO, wants to save the music industry through tech

In the 1990s, few bands were more adored by critics and fans than the Smashing Pumpkins. Combining the brute force and technical chops of heavy metal, the ambition and theatricality of arena rock, and the dark, disillusioned lyricism of grunge, the Pumpkins dominated concert halls, television sets, and bedroom stereos at a time when I was in my formative years as a music fan.

They also reigned during a much happier time for the music industry. Propped up by exorbitantly high CD prices and the explosion of MTV as a cultural mainline into the hearts of America’s youth, music was making more people more money than ever before.

But since 2000, the amount of revenue created from selling or streaming music in the US has been cut in half, from $14.3 billion to $7 billion. Blame iTunes, blame Napster, blame Spotify and Pandora, or blame shortsighted record company execs — regardless of how we got here, there’s a new normal for music industry stakeholders, who are all feeling the pain. And while it’s an overly simplistic way to frame this crisis, the debate over loss revenues has largely centered on artists decrying tech companies for ripping them off.

Which is part of what makes ex-Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin’s recent move into tech entrepreneurship so fascinating. He’s lived through and reaped the benefits of the golden era, witnessed its decline, and is now the CEO of LiveOne, a Chicago-based startup trying to do its part to breathe some life (and hopefully dollars) back into the music industry. LiveOne’s flagship product is called Crowdsurfing, and it’s designed to make livestreams of concerts or other events a more social experience by allowing users to interact with other people watching the stream like they would at a real event. These virtual concertgoers can find others to chat with, filtering by location or Facebook friends, and LiveOne already counts huge brands like Budweiser, Red Bull, and Yahoo as clients.

So what made Chamberlin switch to the other team?

Part of it is that he has a wife and kids, And while the life of a tech entrepreneur isn’t always conducive to family life, it’s better than being on the road all the time. But disillusionment with the music industry also prompted the move.

“As the music business began to get more homogenized and less creative and more cookie cutter, some of the dynamics that were attractive to me as a young man started to disappear.”

In other words, for Chamberlin, the decline of the music industry is about more than dollars and cents.

“When every part of your life has a capacity to be vaporized”

“Music in general is going through a very big dynamic change,” Chamberlin says, “and I think music is always reflective of the culture that consumes it. And if the culture becomes more disposable, when music delivery is more disposable, when 90 percent of a young person’s life is in the cloud, it becomes less about product and more about experiences.”

That’s part of why so much of youth culture has shifted its attention toward genres like Electronic Dance Music (EDM). For fans of artists like Skrillex and Kaskade, the experience of seeing the artist live, dousing yourself in the sweat of strangers, and seizing up amid a light show that cost more to produce than most artists make in a year is at least as important as the music itself. Not that experiences haven’t always been a huge part of music fandom. But in the age of playlists and instant availability of content, the idea of buying a record and locking yourself in your bedroom to listen to it front-to-back is downright antiquated. Chamberlin thinks evidence of this can be found in the fact that nobody cares if a band “sells out” and ties its music to brands anymore.

“I think it’s indicative of the disposability of the culture, when every part of your life has a capacity to be vaporized,” Chamberlin says. Music moves in and out of people’s lives so quickly today that there’s no time to worry about whether the band is on Exxon Mobil’s payroll. And even if that was the case, most people wouldn’t care because there’s less of a connection today between fans and musicians. In the pre-digital days, we expected more from artists because fandom took a greater buy-in on the part of the listeners.

“If you wanted to participate in the culture, you had to have the T-shirt, you had to see the video,” Chamberlin says. “Nas, Eminem, Beastie Boys or Flavor Flav… those people had cultural components that still drive the culture today.”

It’s not that Chamberlin is some old man yelling at the ravers to get off his lawn. “I love EDM and that music, and I think it’s super important and critical,” he says. But will it have a longterm effect on culture like the artists he cites? Or will it be lost in the fog of short-term millennial memory, like an embarrassing drunken Facebook photo we delete the day we apply for our first real job? Ask that question in ten years, Chamberlin says.

So what about non-EDM artists who don’t want to suffer and starve for their art? Chamberlain even says of his team at LiveOne, “If this were 1992, we’d probably be in a band together.” Should modern day creatives just say “Fuck it” and get tech jobs?

Reliving the Motown moment

Musicians love to complain about low royalty payments from Spotify and Pandora. But at least they have it better than Barrett Strong.

Strong co-wrote the 1960 hit “Money (That’s What I Want)” which, along with generating millions in royalties thanks to cover versions by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, helped kickstart the success of Motown Records which would go on to produce 79 Top Ten singles over the next ten years.

But Strong’s name was removed from the copyright filing by Motown executives who claimed that his inclusion as a co-writer was a clerical error, thus depriving him of a share in the royalties. And yet, many who were there when the song was originally recorded back Strong’s claim. “It all emanated from Barrett Strong,” said recording engineer Robert Bateman. (The New York Times has a good rundown of the whole story).

This is only one of many instances where Motown artists, through lack of business savvy and possible malicious intent on the part of Motown executives, lost the rights to millions in royalties.

Then, as now, it’s easy to blame the evil corporate fat-cats for depriving artists of fair royalties. But while the powers-that-be are anything but innocent, Chamberlin says the only way most artists will make a decent buck in this business is to demand it.

“It’s going to be up to artists to make sure they have a place at the table,” Chamberlin says. “We’re reliving this Motown moment where everyone’s going to wake up and realize it was only because artists didn’t have a place at the table. I’m not passing any blame, I’m just sitting here and watching it happen again.”

Chamberlin emphasizes that, even during his time with the Pumpkins’ at the height of the CD, artists have always been at the financial mercy of labels and publishers. The only difference between then and today is that in the 90s there was much more money to go around.

“I just think when money’s swollen like that there’s this ‘high tide rises all boats’ type of mentality,” he says. Now that the money’s dried up, labels are still demanding their share while doing less than ever to help bands.

“If you look at a record label today versus a record label 20 years ago, what are you getting from a record label now that you actually need? You need a physical product, you need a street team, and you need money to go on tour. Well, record companies aren’t doling out any of that.”

Record labels do play an instrumental role in getting artists on terrestrial radio stations, which is still a powerful driver of success. As much as digital svengalis like to say the success of, say, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis was a purely organic YouTube-driven phenomenon, the group still paid Warner Music Group to get their song on the radio. The big difference is that Macklemore retained the rights to the song. It was a triumph of business savvy as much as digital democracy.

Of course no matter how much control artists retain over their work, it won’t change the fact that there’s less money than ever to go around. And with recording and distribution costs fast approaching zero, there are more bands than ever vying for that cash.

That’s why startups like Chamberlin’s LiveOne, which sees missed revenue opportunities in something many bands are already doing (livestreaming), could play a crucial role in getting the industry back on its feet.

Today’s startup culture is like the music scene in the 90s

Chamberlin’s interest in entrepreneurship intensified around the time Groupon was starting to give Chicago some serious startup credibility.

“I knew (Groupon founder) Andrew Mason, knew (CFO) Jason Child, and just got swept up in the dynamics of that team,” Chamberlin says. “It was dynamic and creative in the way the music scene was in the 90s. If this were 1992, we’d probably be in a band together. Through the years I found that there’s tons of similarities. It really does attract the same kind of mindset.”

Soon, Chamberlin was getting invited to sit in on investment rounds. And in the course of those meetings, he discovered the technology underlying Crowdsurfing. Chamberlin knew from his days with the Pumpkins that livestreaming concerts could be a positive revenue stream for artists, but he also felt that no one had really figured out how to keep people on the livestream page so that brands (who, like it or not, are paying for all this) could make an impression with users. By looking to replicate the physical experience of attending a concert as closely as possible, right down to avatars so users can see the faces of the people watching, Crowdsurfing turned Chamberlin into a believer.

He joined the team in April 2012, coming on as a Director of Partnerships, and about a year later was approached about filling the role as CEO. Now, instead of banging snares and kickdrums in front of thousands of fans, Chamberlin is striking deals with clients and working with payroll. But despite the shift in cultures, Chamberlin’s passion and excitement hasn’t wavered — not even when it comes to that most dreaded and painful aspect of entrepreneurship: raising money.

“When you put your passion first, and you’re not selling snake oil, the investor part becomes an attractive challenge,” Chamberlin said. “It’s not a drudgery, but a celebration of what you’ve created. There’s no better benchmark for the company than its investors and who’s been participating.” Next month, LiveOne will begin its Series A round.

But regardless of how slick Crowdsurfing’s technology is, do people really want to sit and watch an entire live event online? Sure, maybe they’ll watch the Oscars or football games or other events people are already accustomed to consuming on their couch. And there are millions of fans who dipped in and out of livestreams of Coachella and other big music events. But to engage a viewer for a long period of time with a concert, something they’re accustomed to seeing live, is a tall order. And without engagement and a considerable amount of time spent-on-site, it may be hard to attract the kind of advertising dollars that can translate into meaningful revenue for creators.

Chamberlin says he has metrics to back up the fact that Crowdsurfing’s social tools do keep people on site. And as consumers continue to demand that content be available across all of their devices, the streaming of live events is only poised to explode, while advertisers have just begun to explore ways to monetize it.

As Chamberlin said in our conversation, people love music today for the experience at least as much as the songs. And to Crowdsurfing’s credit, it’s trying to optimize an experience to the point that either fans or advertisers will pay for it. Who knows, maybe some of that money will trickle down to creators in a significant way.

If so, it won’t single-handedly save the music industry. But by adding another way for artists to make money, maybe it will at least convince a kid to start a band instead of a tech company.

Read half.
Paid streaming concerts could be a good idea, but hacking is always a problem.

Bread Regal

09-08-2014, 06:43 PM

Read half.
Paid streaming concerts could be a good idea, but hacking is always a problem.
Who cares if it's a problem?

bs1933

09-08-2014, 09:07 PM

It's so long. Can someone skim it for me and supply a summary? Can someone also wipe me?

Crying Mercury

09-08-2014, 09:59 PM

This article is basically saying that JC is helping the music industry further itself and bring itself to the fans more by becoming CEO of a company called LiveOne, Inc, who through something called "Crowd Surfing" basically creates a virtual concert experience for the fans. Crowd Surfing basically shows fans a concert online via live streaming the concert and allows its users to communicate with those that are also watching the same concert, which makes the concert experience more interactive in the modern day. Chamberlin basically believes he has the tools to help CrowdSurfing get off of the ground by being CEO of LiveOne. This is what I got out of it, the very short and skinny of it.

Ram27

09-08-2014, 10:25 PM

My speakers and screen are shitty. I'd rather pay more to go to a real concert.

butthurt

09-08-2014, 10:26 PM

Sounds like something an old metal head on the prowl for freaky chicks would do...

themadcaplaughs

09-08-2014, 11:44 PM

It seems like Chamberlin has really, without even trying, done all the things Corgan has professed he would do. Jimmy is part of a group that is working in innovation in the music business, and his various projects, even if only appealing to a small group, shows he is willing to create simply for his own artistic growth.

Billy signed a deal with a major record label to release two albums worth of material he is desperately trying to pimp on his blog as being as good as Siamese Dream and Adore COMBINED!

amoergosum

09-09-2014, 01:44 AM

Billy is obviously impressed and interested in the idea. He posted a link to this interview on >>>
http://www.smashingpumpkinsnexus.com/#!PANDODAILY-INTERVIEW-WITH-JIMMY-CHAMBERLIN/c7ba/0C1FB012-FB1A-42E3-B546-9CEA3BEBDADF

Crying Mercury

09-09-2014, 07:20 AM

Unrelated, but I went to go check out the link and it would appear as if the Nexus is down (???).

amoergosum

09-09-2014, 07:41 AM

Unrelated, but I went to go check out the link and it would appear as if the Nexus is down (???).

Yep...www.smashingpumpkinsnexus.com is down.

Ram27

09-09-2014, 08:20 AM

so......does this mean Jimmy's coming back?

Ram27

09-09-2014, 08:21 AM

I just checked, it's working as well as it ever did

Crying Mercury

09-09-2014, 08:39 AM

Thank you for confirming it is working. Was down this morning but it was interesting.

amoergosum

09-09-2014, 09:01 AM

The server is still down here.

MyOneAndOnly

09-09-2014, 09:18 AM

I just checked, it's working as well as it ever did

which means it sucks

Crying Mercury

09-09-2014, 09:39 AM

Yeah, I have zero connection to Nexus at all.

T&T

09-09-2014, 10:21 AM

why is the nexus page the shittiest in all of the internet?
are they using servers from 1996?

bye june

09-09-2014, 11:09 AM

It's a throwback to the mellon collie era

Ram27

09-09-2014, 11:35 AM

why is the nexus page the shittiest in all of the internet?
are they using servers from 1996?

Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin decided a few years ago that he was tired of the road. He wanted to be around his family more and watch his two young children grow up.

The next act for the big-league rock drummer? Investing in and advising tech companies.

“I was just kind of over being on the road and repeating the endless cycle,” Chamberlin said. “I’d been on the road for a good portion of his life, and I felt like as I got older that time was a commodity I was no longer prepared to mortgage.”

Chamberlin’s early tech efforts received a serious boost from a Chicago-based company founded by an entrepreneur who’d once interned at a studio where Chamberlin and Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan recorded.

The company was Groupon, whose founder, Andrew Mason, had once brought the band sandwiches. Watching Groupon’s ascent was part of the reason the Pumpkins’ drummer says he “caught the tech bug”.

His music industry experience took care of the rest. Chamberlin is the CEO of Chicago-based LiveOne, a company whose showpiece product is a service called CrowdSurfing that builds social, interactive experiences around live events.

After meeting the LiveOne team and a brief stint as an investor and adviser, Chamberlin came aboard as CEO about 15 months ago. The company has raised more than $4m since he joined, and grown from three employees to 25. The future is here for the music industry, he says, and they need to adapt.

“Today’s consumer is less interested in possessing things and more in experiencing them,” Chamberlin says. “That’s something the music industry needs to get its head around. Do we even need record companies any more? It’s going to be an interesting two to three years as we see this whole transition evolve. Music is always going to be only as sophisticated as the culture that consumes it,” he says.

“When I saw the CrowdSurfing application, it immediately took me back to scenarios with the Pumpkins,” Chamberlin said. “We looked at live streaming as another revenue source with the Pumpkins. Corgan and I used to talk about it, but we always whittled that reality down to the way people consume the content. Somebody looking at the event through a laptop with crappy speakers isn’t going to drive the economics. We needed to wait for live streaming to get better.”

CrowdSurfing’s reason for being also harkens back to its name. It gives fans a place to connect while watching the stream – and a place where advertisers can reach them. LiveOne works with companies like Red Bull and CBS, selling advertising that’s presented to music fans who chat with other fans during the CrowdSurfing live streams.

While the technology has arguably caught up, Chamberlin knows better than most that the music industry’s established business models haven’t caught up with the technological shift – and in some cases have been obliterated by it.

Music sales in the first six months of 2014 were a little less than $3.2bn, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America. That’s down almost 5% from the same period last year, and streaming appears to be part of the reason why, based on the RIAA’s analysis of music consumption among consumers.

The figures are one more reminder of the fundamental shift in the music business. Lucrative CD sales gave way to less lucrative digital sales and now streaming companies like Spotify are chomping into digital download sales. The shift has been so monumental that no one blinks when a major act like U2 pre-empts a traditional album release by piping tunes straight into Apple users’ music libraries for free.

“The great irony of today’s more traditional music business is that it seems hell-bent on offering the most loyal fans ways to spend less, when what they actually want to do is to pay more for a better experience or product,” said PledgeMusic co-founder and CEO Benji Rogers, whose company helps musicians use technology to connect with fans.

Live streaming an experience like a concert, Chamberlin hopes, is something that could slake a fan’s appetite for content from a musician and keep them eager to open their wallet for more.

What Chamberlin is doing might sound contradictory, given that he’s a rock musician who once made his living making fans pay to see him live and now wants to offer today’s music fans the chance to do so, if they want, from their couch. But Chamberlin said streaming events can build an audience’s appetite for the real thing.

“There’s enough data around making things available or not, that the availability of content online is a good thing for the economics of the physical space,” Chamberlin said. “As CrowdSurfing evolves, it will never fully replicate the physical experience. But we’re looking at live streaming as a vivid business card for the experience.”

Live streaming may have caught on with fans but there are still questions about whether there’s a business model to build around it. Bob Lefsetz, a music industry analyst who publishes the Lefsetz Letter email newsletter and blog, said the business model isn’t there yet. “So far, no one’s made any money doing it,” he said.

Chamberlin is convinced the business is there and has big ambitions that may eventually take the company beyond music. LiveOne could look at something related to a political campaign and perhaps even mega-churches that want to stream a gathering to a live audience.

Chamberlin is betting that his company can capitalise on that, that it can get a growing number of people familiar with the act of streaming something that they might otherwise have only thought of as an event to experience in person. “I’m of the opinion that whatever the culture drives, that’s where you’ve got to run your business. It doesn’t pay to stamp your feet. Streaming is going to be a big part of the future,” he said.

houseofglass11

10-15-2014, 05:05 PM

Ehh, that company sounds like a failed business venture in the making.

slunken

10-15-2014, 05:51 PM

when i read stuff like that the only thing i can think of is that the material covered (the live streams) are still going to be decided upon by a group of people which makes it no different from any other label and if it's a good enough idea they would have to actually team up with other major record labels still in the game to get the "best" content for live streaming and etc and etc and etc

slunken

10-15-2014, 05:52 PM

i mean if anything that business model is actually piggybacking off of the old one

Elphenor

10-15-2014, 06:11 PM

It seems okay but I hate the "gonna help the music industry" talk. The music industry is doing just fine. It's continuing to sell mostly shitty pop music to stupid people.

Good music still exists in the underground as it always has and doesn't need to be made commercial.

christian zombie vampires

10-15-2014, 08:03 PM

"Music is such a small part of people's lives now," he says. "People don't sit around like they did in the Nineties and stare at album covers and think about Kurt and Billy. I fucking hated the Nineties."

i remember reading that and being floored. not only is it one of most dead-on and devastatingly true quotes ever, summing up the last 15 years of thinkpieces about the music industry, but jimmy had to be one of the very last people i'd ever expect to hear that from. funny how when jimmy talks it's almost always about being incredibly sincere and thankful and religious, and then every so often he reveals that he's really smart. even if this is only a success for like 3 years as they ride the first wave of monetizing concert streams and then is proven to be an unsustainable fad, he'll make a metric shit ton of money.

Araneae

10-15-2014, 08:47 PM

I wish Jimmy the best of luck but I don't see the potential in it. I see a lot more problems than possibilities here. I also feel conflicted about feeding into this part of the culture, or the resignation of it.

Ram27

10-15-2014, 11:23 PM

I still don't get what purpose the livestream is fulfilling. Is it if you wanted tickets to a concert, but couldn't go? Would I able to watch a band I like tour and play every night?

I feel like the average person just wouldn't bother, really.

Elphenor

10-15-2014, 11:46 PM

I don't get why you would want to watch a concert on your computer live. What is the appeal here?

I'll just watch it the next day when I can skip through the songs I don't like

butthurt

10-15-2014, 11:52 PM

Yeah, man, but you can interact with other fans via a chatroom while you watch! You know you want to pay for that kind of experience.

Araneae

10-16-2014, 12:57 AM

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Here’s my problem with all of these start-ups, the nerds that were trying to dismantle the record labels just turned out be just as bad as the labels. Most of them are a bunch of assholes that pay shit royalties to the artists they’re making millions off of. Sure, the industry made a big fucking mess by bleeding consumers dry in the 90s, but these models aren’t working to keep artists going, especially new and young artists. The only ones who seem to be reaping the benefits of these types of services are major pop singers/bands and DJs; all of this just feeds into the corrosion of music as an art form or a political and cultural tool.

I’m obviously not the target audience for this, but I would rather pay and travel with friends and see a live concert than sit on my couch for a few hours “interacting” with other random people in a chatroom watching the stream. I just don’t see the appeal. I’m far past the ‘I have to see/have everything from band x’ phase and I'm not an anti-social hermit.

jimmy drevpile

10-16-2014, 02:59 PM

It's basically Twitch, but for music rather than games isn't it. Not quite the same market yeah. But even if it is a fraction as successful - it's a fairly savvy business venture... i guess.

slunken

10-16-2014, 05:01 PM

I'm just imagining a project like this doing nothing other than continuing to promote mediocre bands

seign

10-20-2014, 11:01 PM

"few bands were more adored by critics"

I don't remember that part

Then you probably weren't born or very young during the SD/MCIS years.

Also, sounds like this start-up is trying to do for concerts what Twitch has done for online gaming. Sounds really interesting to be honest. You could essentially "follow" your favorite bands on tour and chat with other fans during the shows. I can even see bands doing pre-show interviews or AMAs, maybe private shows etc. I wonder if Billy will lend a hand and sign the Pumpkins up when the inevitable touring starts behind the new albums?

seign

10-20-2014, 11:06 PM

I'm just imagining a project like this doing nothing other than continuing to promote mediocre bands

I don't know why you'd say that. I'd think it would be more successful at bringing a wider audience to bands with less exposure.

Funbags

10-20-2014, 11:32 PM

Ehh, that company sounds like a failed business venture in the making.

Not if Google buys it.

seign

10-21-2014, 08:17 AM

Yeah, man, but you can interact with other fans via a chatroom while you watch! You know you want to pay for that kind of experience.

You'd be very surprised. Twitch is basically the same thing only instead of watching concerts, they stream nothing but people playing video games while users chat on the side. They just sold to Amazon for $1billion.

amoergosum

11-03-2014, 05:30 AM

Sat, Nov 1, 2014

Best known as the long-serving drummer of one of the most successful alternative bands of the 1990s, The Smashing Pumpkins, Jimmy Chamberlin will rock into Dublin to speak at this year’s Music Summit, a spin-off from the Web Summit.

Chamberlin will be representing LiveOne Inc, a company, of which he is chief executive, that seeks to revolutionise and monetise the live streaming of online content via social media integration.

The Illinois-born drummer attributes part of his interest in business, specifically the Chicago tech scene, to his relationship with Andrew Mason, founder of Groupon. Early on, Chamberlin identified similarities between the technology and music industries. “It’s a pretty cool company that I have got involved with,” he says. “I left the Pumpkins in 2010 and I just took a year off to hang with my family and be with my daughter and my son and my wife, and just get acclimatised to being off the road. Then I started looking at what was going to be the next part of my career/legacy, whatever you want to call it.”

As a contributing member to acclaimed and commercially successful albums such as Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Chamberlin’s route up the corporate ladder is no doubt different from that of the many chief executives and other industry stakeholders attending the Music Summit. But involvement with the lucrative business side of The Smashing Pumpkins brought him to the conclusion that the economic side of things is usually intertwined with the creative side.

“I’m not saying I only want to make fun and I don’t want to make money . . . It was the same thing in the Pumpkins,” he says. “We wanted to be extremely creative, but our goal even at the height of indie rock, when it wasn’t cool to sell records and indie band X and indie band Y were making fun of us because we were having commercial success, we only wanted to participate at the highest level and we only wanted to sell the most amount of records.”

U2 viewpoints

As expected, the question of U2’s choice of delivery mechanism for their latest album brought multiple viewpoints from the dual perspective of the chief executive/rock star. “So, yeah . . . I forgot we’re going to Dublin, right?” He laughs. “I think people often forget U2 are in the U2 business. Let’s not forget about that. U2 owe it to themselves to find the best possible way to market their music. Did they jump the shark a little bit? Maybe, but again the Pumpkins fell into this category in the 1990s, where we were arguably one of the biggest bands around, then all of a sudden you’re not only responsible for just your own career but somehow everyone else’s career as well, and that’s just not right.

“U2 are a great band, they’ve given us an unbelievable body of work, and all of us musicians owe them at least something. I can honestly say that every time I have played the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, as soon as my drums are set up I go into the beat of Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

"We just looked at cultural movements and figured out how monetize t****

nice

At least Jimmy isn't spouting off nonsense about chemtrails and tea

Araneae

11-06-2014, 09:44 PM

He seems really serious about focusing on this one endeavor and working hard to see it come to fruition. I personally don't see a market for this, certainly not anytime soon, but you gotta appreciate how much work he's putting into it and how knowledgeable and well spoken he is on this subject.

i'm personally surprised at how many of you are surprised that jim is smart. i honestly don't think you are able to understand and produce really complex things in music unless you're fairly high functioning, which i have found means you also have a good head for numbers. maybe i'm nuts

i love how the chicago accent breaks through a few times. bill never sounds like he's from chicago

seign

02-26-2015, 06:19 PM

Also, sounds like this start-up is trying to do for concerts what Twitch has done for online gaming. Sounds really interesting to be honest. You could essentially "follow" your favorite bands on tour and chat with other fans during the shows. I can even see bands doing pre-show interviews or AMAs, maybe private shows etc. I wonder if Billy will lend a hand and sign the Pumpkins up when the inevitable touring starts behind the new albums?

Looks like Twitch already beat them to the punch: http://www.twitch.tv/beatport

Diplo and Skrillex streaming live via Twitch for the next 24 hours. I think this is what Jimmy's start-up was trying to do? Problem is, Twitch already has a built in audience and a recognizable name.

edit: The fact that Twitch is even allowing people to stream their own music instead of focusing soley on gaming is huge. IMO, this totally kills LiveOne before they even got out of the gate (unless they have something up their sleeves like signed/exclusive artists).

lionheart0

02-27-2015, 12:05 AM

Looks like Twitch already beat them to the punch: http://www.twitch.tv/beatport

Diplo and Skrillex streaming live via Twitch for the next 24 hours. I think this is what Jimmy's start-up was trying to do? Problem is, Twitch already has a built in audience and a recognizable name.

edit: The fact that Twitch is even allowing people to stream their own music instead of focusing soley on gaming is huge. IMO, this totally kills LiveOne before they even got out of the gate (unless they have something up their sleeves like signed/exclusive artists).

Maybe the Smashing Pumpkins will be exclusive to them.

:rofl:

amoergosum

02-27-2015, 02:11 AM

Looks like Twitch already beat them to the punch: http://www.twitch.tv/beatport

Diplo and Skrillex streaming live via Twitch for the next 24 hours. I think this is what Jimmy's start-up was trying to do? Problem is, Twitch already has a built in audience and a recognizable name.

edit: The fact that Twitch is even allowing people to stream their own music instead of focusing soley on gaming is huge. IMO, this totally kills LiveOne before they even got out of the gate (unless they have something up their sleeves like signed/exclusive artists).

Here's a demo clip (LiveOne) >>>
http://youtu.be/n1_z9oOdytA?t=49m07s

http://i.imgur.com/xlysKVy.png?1

Elphenor

02-27-2015, 02:50 AM

Damn Jimmy IS a smart dude whether this works or not

Elphenor

02-27-2015, 02:57 AM

Wow around the hour point Jimmy really talks up Corgan's songwriting, puts him in his top 3 or 4